The last stop of our first travel Ign on Software was the sound room, in which the main composer Shoi Miyazawa creates great soundtracks that fill the lands between notes of hope, melancholy and fights. This is our interview, which concerns what is aimed at creating a soundtrack from Soft, which specifically were notes from the director in relation to Nightreign music and the personal influence of Miyazawa.
Ign: So I wanted to start with a question about how you fell into the world of composing video music. Are you a massive fan?
Shoi Miyazawa – main sound designer at Elden Ring Nightreign:
I was a fan of Core armored games. So when Hoshino-San asked me for recruitment in FromSoftware, I was very interested. I am a massive fan of armored core music. I also like other titles from my childhood, such as Ganbare Goemon and Secret of Mana. So I always conduct research and try to find inspiration from these titles. The Castlevania series was also a great musical inspiration.
Do you have your favorite composers in the same poems who can also inspire your work? Not only video games, generally.
I’ve always been a fan of King Crimson and Marilyn Manson. I like this kind of various types of vibrations in music.
By switching gears to Elden Ring and Nightreign, what is the process of composing something like Elden Ring? Have you received conceptual art for the boss or location and then exploit this inspiration for the sound? Or maybe you gave specific notes about the sense or mood that the director is looking for?
There are several approaches that we can take as you mentioned. Sometimes the director gives a quick description of the mood or location he wants. Sometimes it comes from the existing conceptual art of the game. Sometimes it is a basic text order, such as a description of the history of the boss or arena in which they fight or something.
Was the work on the soundtrack for Nightreign differed from the experience of working on the soundtrack for the main basic game?
Of course, this is the spin-off of the Elden Ring, so we wanted it to move or move some elements from Elden Ring and the vibrations they secrete. I had many direct conversations with the director himself discussing the aspects of Elden Ring and the way we should get closer to Nightreign. And I think that although he wanted it to be quite different from Souls titles, he also wanted him to be catchy in his own way. So this kind of catchy and offering something that differed from Elden Ring was quite crucial in our work.
Can you describe, maybe some notes that you could give from the director in relation to the sound and tone of the soundtrack? Were there any repetitive motifs you wanted to hit?
Yes. So, seeing how Night was an crucial topic of Nightreign, we wanted to feel being out of place, a sense of loneliness, a feeling that is associated with the darkness or a kind of loneliness of the night. These were elements that we wanted to include in the music.
Among the many projects that you have worked on so far in FromSoftware, which was your favorite, and which was also the most complex?
Of course, I have many nice memories of working on titles and it is really complex to close a specific title. But there is a couple who got stuck with me, in particular several songs. One of them is when we composed Consort Radadahn on Elden Ring. I like to do that I really like to compose a kind of shadowy room in a poorly lit room. So I had this feeling when I composed this song that you have always been someone in the shade and look at the shoulder. So this kind went through the song for Consort Radadahn.
The next one would be that the song takes me anywhere from DISC TEED with an additional soundtrack from the armored Core VI. I know that it is a bit different than fantasy music that we made with our games, but for me, as I said, the armored core was a series that I especially liked. And when I entered the company, it just started some of this series during the break. So I had something, I had some ideas there, but AC IV was a long -awaited game. A lot of time has passed. And he takes me anywhere, it was one of the original songs that we produced for this bonus set of records. So it was something that restored the memory of those times and it was a song, it was a piece that I meant since I started working a bit on these titles, but I couldn’t fully develop in these games. So it reminds me of these days and everything we went through with the armored core. And I hope people listen to it too.
There are several composers who are attributed to work on Elden Ring. Can you tell a bit about how cooperation with effort is to compose music in games such as Elden Ring and Nightreign? Do you work completely separately or do you work closely even though you are responsible for various songs?
Basically, when we compose music, this is one composer for one song. This is the general approach we take. But of course we can get advice and a kind of ideas for exchanges with other members of the sound team. But ultimately in loans you will see that the person assigned to this song is the one that has passed to the end. But Nightreign was a bit exception here. In some cases, we have many composers working on one track.
One of the bosses we had to check today as part of our visit was Libra: Creature of Night. I wondered if you have any observations or stories, which went in creating this song.
In fact, in the case of Libra, it was one of the uncommon cases in which a specific musical direction or ideas were given in a nutshell. So it was one that stood out for me. We had these topics to try to bring something as a look and, as the boss’s fight suggests, some topics about exotic nature or these impressions of madness or like a description nature for the boss. And again, introducing this duality, which you will find both before fighting the boss and in its period, taking into account the elements of victory and failure, it is a compromise, risk and reward. We try to create a harsh contrast with many of our bosses, but in particular we wanted to take him to the extreme for Wagra.
The contrast between day and night during bosses fight is very striking, as well as evident in music. Can you tell us a bit about how you approached these songs?
Of course, we have this cycle of day and night and this three -day structure to Nightreign. So, as we mentioned earlier, we wanted the player to feel that there was an impressive sense of danger. Enemies and bosses become stronger as the night is approaching. We wanted it to be more and more out of place, more and more beyond your depth. These are things that we try, feelings that we try to convey through Nightreign music.
Is there a specific song or anything you are really excited about players for the first time when they play you worked on?
One thing that is compared to the music we have done for Elden Ring and DLC was really focusing on the individuality of each of these boss fights, with which players will encounter many times. That is why we really wanted to cross the boundaries of music for each of these fights. And sometimes it was a coincidence, can we really press it so far? And I think that we eventually expanded these limits and really crossing the boundaries of music from our fantastic titles. This is one area that I hope that players are waiting.
Returning to your personal preferences, do you have your favorite musical instrument or something you like to include in your compositions?
This is not an instrument, but in fact when I started to study music, it was with a personal computer and was with DTM software. This was my first real contact with the creation of music, especially professionally. So, as a creator, such software allows me to really focus on smaller elements and really tune these elements to each last note and pitch. So I think it is something that I would like the player to understand or hope to notice when they listen to these songs. Because I really get into it, probably too much, which is vigorous to work.
One of the things I asked about everyone I talked to from fromSoftware was what your favorite game is. We know that we talked a bit about video games from music, but do you have any games that really stand out as your favorite game of all time?
One of the games I remember tenderly is myst. Such adventure games, usually have it quite, maybe only some readers or viewers will remember, but this kind of previously rendered scenes that pass from the other. But you pass the world and solve the puzzles of this adventure. It really got stuck with me as a player. So yes, I think Myst would be a good example.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer in IGN. You can find it on Twitter @Jurassicrabbit
